Tag Archives: the bachelor

So I’m watching my guilty pleasure the other night, The Bachelor (yeah, yeah, I only watch a few “Reality” shows like this for education and analyzing purposes only!).

And I’m watching as this season’s studly Bachelor, Ben Higgins, navigates his way through trying to get to know the plethora of single ladies vying for his heart, one painful conversation at a time.

I love seeing how all these poor women go about trying to impress him and compete for his attention – it’s like a trainwreck I can’t help but watch.

But the show, as silly and dramatic as it can be sometimes, does help to illuminate some very real patterns, issues and challenges that pop up for people when they are dating and entering relationships.

The fact that the show is so fast-paced and intense magnifies the sub-conscious issues that lie beneath the surface of so many single people that keep them sabotaging their relationships.

So I was inspired to write this blog after seeing AshLee, one of the top 3 finalists on The Bachelor (my guilty pleasure), get sadly booted off last night by Sean after she painstakingly declared many times that she believed Sean was her “Soulmate.” I’m going to tell you my expert analysis of what she did wrong that caused his seemingly sudden change of heart about her – because it’s something that a lot of my female clients do (before getting my coaching, of course) and MUCH of the female population does!

Does this situation sound familiar to you? You start dating a guy and you like him a lot, everything seems to be going great, and you think things are moving along in the right direction…

You are pretty certain he likes you back and it’s moving the way you want it to. You feel like love is in the stars for you and maybe you already feel like he’s The One!

And then all of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere – your guy starts pulling away, or he just suddenly tells you “I really like you… BUT I’m just not into a commitment right now and I don’t think we should see each other anymore.” Or something like, “I want to slow things down a bit and just keep things casual.”

And you are in disbelief with your head spinning as you drop down from your cloud 9 to figure out what exactly happened. Well if this has happened to you before, your multiple times, it may very well be a sign that you move too quickly, or, what I call, “Assuming the Role of Girlfriend.”

Here’s some common behaviors that women do when they’ve crossed into this “Assuming the Role of Girlfriend” phase – similar to what our friend AshLee did on The Bachelor:

Once you start really falling for him, You think you feel safe and comfortable expressing more of your feelings and getting a little more comfortable and close… But then you get a little TOO comfortable expressing your feelings to him. And opening up to him about anything and everything, including some skeletons in your closet.

Before he’s even brought up The Talk, a.k.a. the big “Commitment Talk” with you and expressed his burning desire to commit to you, you start DOING little “girlfriendy” things – like leaving stuff at his place, stopping by his work to bring him lunch, or assuming you guys will have plans together on the weekends or in a few months from now.

You may make yourself totally available and accessible to him, both emotionally, physically and sexually in in the way that a committed girlfriend would be – gushing to him about your growing feelings for him, trying to see him any chance you get, and not dating anyone else but him.

And it’s usually pretty shortly after that that he suddenly puts on the brakes… Seemingly (to YOU), out of nowhere.

For a guy, all of this just comes too much, too soon! And it causes him to take a step back and pull away.

Because men are slower to come around to big changes in their life. Unlike most women, most men are pretty content hanging out as a Bachelor and playing the field for a while, and the idea of a “committed relationship” feels at first more of a lockup on their precious “freedom” then it is beautiful and desirable thing like us women think of it as.

First they need to just get used to these new exciting feelings they have for you… Then they want to enjoy the little chase they get in pursuing you and getting to know you better.

If keep digging you and they find you to be a quality girl who has her own interesting life and is still keeping up with it, then he IS thinking about committing to you, and he WILL most likely bring up that “Commitment Talk” on his own a little bit later, when he feels that you’ve passed some of his “tests” and that you really are a quality girl that he enjoys being around, that won’t restrict his freedom, and that he genuinely wants to commit to.

But if you try speed things up too much, then it actually interrupts that process for him. It makes him feel pressured and anxious. It’s too much change, too quickly.

And especially if he gets the impression from you that you’re feelings are rapidly growing and you might even like him more than he likes you, then he feels even more pressured because he thinks he has to make a decision about you ASAP – either Yay or Nay – because he doesn’t want you to keep getting more attached and then, even more hurt if after evaluating things he realizes he doesn’t in fact want to commit to you.

And often what happens is that if he sees that you’re showing a lot more interest than he is, he’ll conclude that there must be something “missing” if he isn’t matching your level of feelings yet.

So, that’s short explanation of why a man may suddenly pull away or lose interest in you after everything seemed to be going great, and why it’s important to NOT exceed a man’s level of interest and effort during that crucial early dating phase. I coach my women in depth on this topic and transform these unattractive dating behaviors in my Women’s Date Coaching programs & my Weekend Bootcamps so that you are never the girl that gets dumped or ditched again, but the woman who has men wanting to COMMIT to and Marry them!